My toe boards and rubrails are both a little shoddy, which is acceptable I guess after 40 years with some neglect. So I''m looking to replace them, but if I could do so with something thats not teak, both for economic and environmental concerns, I think that would be best. I would still like to stay with wood, as the boats already plastic enough even with the accents. Any suggestions?

Black Locust. It''s harder then Oak and the grain is intertwined so it''s more resilient. It finishes nice too. You can probably find a tree in someone''s back yard that they want to get rid of. There''s a bunch of cheep African Mahogany 1X decking around but the stuff is brittle and it swells and contracts like crazy. I''ve also seen some good Fir decking around at Home Depot. Select the close grain stuff if you choose this wood.

While the heart wood of properly air dried black locust is about as rot resistant as a wood can be, the sap wood is a highly unstable, more prone to checking and rot. It is hard to find clear straight lengths of black locust and while there are other types of Locust these are totally unsuited for marine applications.

Both the African mahogany and fir are a little soft for rub rails and these materials need to be kept sealed to prevent rot.

We have been using a lot of Ipe for decking in our area. It appears to have many of the favorable characteristics of Teak at a lot less money. It is a very hard and dense wood but is a little hard on tools. Another wood that we''ve seen good prices on is Purple Heart which is also very durable and rot resistant but a bit hard to work as well.

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